The Gaiety Theatre, Manchester was a theatre in Manchester, England. It was opened in 1884 and demolished in 1959. It replaced a previous Gaiety Theatre on the site which had been destroyed by fire. The old Gaiety Theatre, under the management of John Hollingshead in 1878, was the world's first theatre to use electric lights for the stage. In 2008 Annie Horniman's centenary was celebrated by a performance of Houghton's play Independent Means, which had been recently "rediscovered" in the British Library by Chris Honer, the theatre's artistic director.